


Master of Balance

by Asu_Shu_Namir



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:55:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25872478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asu_Shu_Namir/pseuds/Asu_Shu_Namir
Summary: This story follows Zuko from childhood to young adulthood as he finds, loses, and regains his sense of balance.
Kudos: 17





	Master of Balance

One of Zuko’s favorite pastimes was walking atop the railings of the Fire Nation palace. He enjoyed the feeling of being pulled in two directions, the challenge of righting himself and continuing to press forward after every misstep. When he practiced in the courtyard, where his sister and her friends played, they laughed at him. Ty Lee would hoist herself up and run across the thin railing, turning cartwheels and flips in midair, then land with a perfect flourish and smirk. “Beat _that_.”

So Zuko didn’t do it in the courtyard very often. But he found other railings and banisters, in little-used sections of the palace, and he practiced. He fell a thousand times and got up a thousand and one. Eventually, he could run at full speed, feet landing perfectly in line, barely needing his arms to steady himself. He would never be able to do it like Ty Lee. But for a few moments, he could close his eyes and pretend he was a world away. He became a master of balance.

As he grew older, he stopped indulging in such childish games. He was the prince of the Fire Nation, after all. He had more important things to do. So when, at age thirteen, he surveyed the foggy mountainside of the Western Air Temple, it had been over a year since he had tried to walk a palace banister. But he still trusted his abilities. He was a master of balance, and that’s not the sort of skill one forgets. There were no railings at the Air Temple, but each rooftop had a thin border of raised tile. Zuko decided to take a break from his search.

Iroh watched from the doorway. He had worried that the last of this joyful child had been burned away, but seeing his nephew clamber out the window brought a smile to his face. The boy had been through so much-- at least let him have a moment of fun.

But that smile turned to a gasp of horror as Zuko suddenly lurched to the side. Iroh rushed forward. At the last moment, Zuko twisted himself so that he would fall onto the hard tile roof instead of the endless drop on the other side of him. Iroh offered him a hand, but his nephew waved him off and picked himself up. “I must be out of practice,” he said. “I have more important things to do anyway.” He walked briskly out of the room, dusting himself off as he went.

The captain of Zuko’s ship was a gray-bearded man who, by his own admission, had been on the sea too long. He was the most expendable of Ozai’s captains, and both he and Zuko knew it. There were a few traditions he clung to, things that the younger sailors dismissed as ancient history but he swore were worthwhile-- for example, he always kept an eyepatch in his pocket. If a situation required much running above and belowdecks, he would keep it on one eye while above so it would always stay adjusted to the dark.

“Has anyone seen my eyepatch?” he asked the crew one evening, to a sea of shrugs.

“You’re the only one who sees any use in that thing,” said one particularly brave sailor. “Why would any of us want it?”

A half hour of fruitless searching on deck, in the berths, and even in the mess hall finally brought him to General Iroh’s room. “What am I thinking?” the captain muttered to himself. “The general couldn’t possibly know or care where it is.” Even so, he pushed open the door.

Iroh had his back to him and was pacing the room-- no, not pacing, walking carefully along a string laid down on the floor. With each step, the general placed his foot toe-first on top of the string, holding his arms out for balance. When he reached the end, he spun around and spotted the captain.

“Ah! My apologies. I believe this is yours.”

With a start, the captain realized he had removed his eyepatch and was holding it out for him to take. “I-- I don’t need it urgently, sir. If there’s something you… were trying to do?” The captain gestured feebly to the string on the ground. Some odd meditation exercise, perhaps? The general was notoriously eccentric.

“Actually, I could use your help.” Iroh pointed at the eyepatch. “When you’re wearing this, how do you navigate? Do you do anything special to compensate for the lost depth perception?”

“To… compensate?” The captain was at a loss.

“It may not be something you’re aware of. Is there anything you do differently when you have one eye covered?”

“I’m not quite sure.” The captain hovered in the doorway. “If you don’t mind me asking, sir, why do you want to know?”

“Oh, no reason. Just curious.” Iroh deposited the eyepatch in his hands, squeezed one eye shut, and returned to the string.

“I don’t need it tonight. You can… you can keep it if you like.”

Iroh smiled. “I’ll give it back tomorrow morning,” he said. As the captain walked back down the hallway, he heard the old general’s footsteps pacing back and forth in his room. What a peculiar man.

A few weeks later, while on their way to the Eastern Temple, the ship was attacked by a group of earthbenders. Zuko was managing well in the fight until a rock flew at him from the left. He barely ducked in time. Iroh shook off the two men attacking him and ran to his nephew’s side.

“I don’t need your protection, uncle.”

“No, you are more than capable of taking care of yourself.”

“Then why are you here? You left the starboard side unguarded.”

“The crew is handling it. To tell you the truth,” Iroh leaned in conspiratorially, “I don’t feel entirely safe on that side. I think I might have injured my right wrist this morning opening a jar of pickled fish.” He aimed a blast of fire at one of the earthbenders. “It’s probably best if I stay here. You’re the only person I trust to guard me.”

He wasn’t sure if the heat of battle was playing tricks on his vision, but Iroh was pretty sure he saw a small smile flicker over his nephew’s features.

The third time Zuko visited the Western Air Temple, the war had been over for over a year. Iroh had insisted that he take a break: rebuilding the world was hard work, and his nephew hadn’t slept a full night in months. “I can manage for a few weeks,” he said. “Get some rest. Visit your friends.”

It was Sokka’s idea, as all the best plans were. A world tour of sorts, a chance to revisit all of the places the group had been together. They started in the South Pole and worked their way up through the Earth Kingdom, stopping to greet Ty Lee and Suki on Kyoshi Island and to eat dinner with the Earth King in Ba Sing Se. Toph tried to enter in the Earth Rumble again, but once she was recognized nobody would fight her. Zuko insisted on a detour through a tiny town in the desert, where he introduced the others to a small farming family and finally gave them a pearl dagger. They were welcomed by the Northern Water Tribe, where they paid their respects to Yue in the Spirit Oasis, and Katara showed a wide-eyed group of children how she froze Zuko (this time a willing volunteer) in a glacier.

Their last stop was the Western Air Temple. It was nearly unrecognizable, half the buildings turned to rubble or completely blasted off the cliff face. The pavilion where they had camped out the previous year was now a stretch of pavement barely large enough for Appa to land, and Toph and Aang had to clear the debris off first. Then they all clambered off the bison’s back, stretching their travel-sore legs.

Zuko ran his hand along the roof of one of the intact buildings. He remembered standing on the border, arms flung out for balance, and the twist of fear in his gut when he began to fall. _I haven’t fallen in years_ , he had thought that day. Today, he lifted himself onto that same green tile edge. _I’ve fallen a thousand times. And I’ve gotten up a thousand and one._

He was better at it, now, more practiced at moving with only one eye. One foot in front of the other, arms out wide, but he barely needed them. He was a master of balance. Zuko smiled at the tug of gravity on his body, well used to being pulled in two directions at once. “Uncle would have a proverb about that.”

“What?” asked Sokka.

“Nothing.”

Katara looked up from preparing their lunch. “That looks dangerous.”

“I know what I’m doing.” And he did. Zuko had found his balance again. He moved faster and faster, until he was running across the rooftop, just as he had as a child. He started to laugh, but was cut short when his foot skidded on a loose tile. He flailed his arms out wildly, unable to regain his footing, then toppled over the side.

“Zuko!” Aang grabbed his glider and jumped off of the pavilion. He could barely see through the thick mist, but he caught a glimpse of his friend’s red cloak and dove towards it. “Grab on!” He felt Zuko’s hand clamp around his ankle, and he opened his glider and pushed air beneath its wings. It was harder with two people, but they made it to the top. The two collapsed on the pavilion, panting.

“What on earth was that about?” demanded Katara. Zuko was silent as he caught his breath, then sat up.

“I almost died here,” he said.

Katara rolled her eyes. “We all did, Zuko. Several times.”

“No, I mean-- before.” Now everyone was looking at him. “I came here right after I was banished. I… thought you might be here.” He glanced at Aang.

“But I wasn’t. Nobody was.”

“Yeah. It was empty.”

“So how’d you almost die?” Toph asked.

“It’s...stupid.” Zuko paused. “When I was little, I liked to try and balance. On railings, tree branches, you know. But when I came here, it was right after…” he touched his scar. Aang placed a hand on his shoulder. “I should’ve known it would be hard. I didn’t have much practice living with only one eye. But I wanted… something that would remind me of home. So I climbed up there, and… well, I fell almost immediately. I was barely able to keep myself from going over the edge.”

Sokka came over. “How much can you see from that eye?” It was a question he had wanted to ask for a long time, but the right occasion had never arisen.

Zuko shut his right eye and looked around. “Light. Colors. Some blurry shapes.”

“Is it hard? Not being able to see?”

“How come you never ask _me_ that?” asked Toph.

“Because you’d launch a rock at my face.”

“Fair enough.”

Zuko rubbed his working eye. “I haven’t really thought about it in a while. You adapt to it, I guess.” He picked at the stone floor beneath him. “I can’t believe I’m talking about something that happened five years ago. We’ve all almost died in a thousand more interesting ways since then. It’s dumb, isn’t it?”

“It’s not dumb.” Aang jumped to the top of the roof and clapped a hand over one eye. He took a single step forward, wobbled, then toppled, laughing, off the edge. He disappeared into the clouds for a moment before coming back up. “That was fun,” he said. “But also scary. If you can’t airbend.”

“Yeah.”

Sokka stood up and clambered onto the roof. “I wonder if I can do it.”

“ _Two people_ just fell into nothingness and you want to try?” asked Katara.

“Yeah.” Sokka shut his left eye, then placed one foot on the edge. He lifted the other and jerked sharply to the left, but righted himself with much undignified flailing. “This is harder than it looks,” he called back to the others.

“Watch out for the loose tiles,” Zuko replied.

“Watch out for the _what_?” Sokka spun around-- or tried to. He lost his balance and tried to make himself fall to the right, but his body had too much momentum. Toph flicked her wrist and a shelf of rock jutted out from the cliff wall. Sokka landed on it, none too gently. “Yeah, you guys get comfortably airbent to safety while I fall onto a giant stone slab. That seems fair.”

“Oh, you don’t want my help?” asked Toph. The shelf began to crumble around the edges.

“O-on second thought, I’m very grateful,” said Sokka hurriedly, jumping back onto the solid floor.

“Well, I hope we all learned a valuable lesson about jumping off of cliffs,” said Katara.

“Yeah,” replied Sokka. “That it’s perfectly fine as long as you’re friends with an airbender and an earthbender.” Aang snickered. Katara smacked her brother’s arm.

“That it’s dangerous,” she corrected. “You could have died.”

“Oh, come on, Katara, we’re all fine. And besides, it’s like Zuko said. We’ve all almost died in a thousand other ways. Most of them were Zuko’s fault, but hey, who’s keeping score?” Even Katara softened her glare enough to laugh at that.

Zuko leaned forward to add a bit of extra heat to the cooking fire. “Sokka’s right.”

“About you almost killing us? Yeah, we know.”

“Well, yes, but I was talking about the first thing he said. You can fall off as many cliffs as you want if you know your friends will catch you.” He stood and walked to the edge of the pavilion. “I used to think I was a master of balance. That I could walk across a rooftop, with one eye covered in bandages, and not stumble once. But I couldn’t.” He curled his toes around the corner where the stone met the sky. “I’m better at it now, better than I ever was-- even before I lost my eye. But I still fall. I’m not perfect.” A lock of hair fell from his topknot, and he twirled it absentmindedly around his finger. Aang came over and stood behind him.

“And you don’t need to be. We’ll catch you.”

“Yeah,” said Toph. She was sitting several yards away, but a rock next to Zuko flew up and hit him in the bicep. He rubbed the sore spot and smiled. That was how she showed affection, he knew.

“Every time.” Sokka paused. “As long as I can do it with my bare hands. Or my boomerang.”

Aang looked back at Katara, who was dividing portions of food onto five plates. They’d become closer in the year since, but she’d been the last to accept Zuko.

Katara stood and put a plate in Zuko’s hands. “You’re part of the group now. We look out for each other.” Then she tweaked his ear. “But you _have_ to stop running across random rooftops.”

Zuko smiled. “Will do.”


End file.
